Before Captain America: The Winter Soldier premiered, there were a lot of wild rumors floating around about the character played by Robert Redford. So we asked the directors, Anthony and Joe Russo, about these crazy notions. And now that we can freely talk about end-of-the-movie spoilers, here's what they told us.

Warning: Spoilers ahead...

Before everyone saw the movie, a lot of people were speculating that Robert Redford was going to be Red Skull. I was relieved to find out he wasn't. Did you hear that rumor? Did you ever toy with the idea of doing that?

Advertisement

Anthony Russo: We did hear that rumor. Fans are always trying to tie everything back to the mythology, and sometimes it's good to subvert expectations. We wanted a very grounded villain for this movie: Redford as a top level bureaucrat. He's sort of the Henry Kissinger for this generation, who's gone bad. That felt like that fit more into the struggle that Cap was going through in the film and it was a better villain for him to oppose. A sort of ideological villain, versus a science fiction creation?

Are we going to be seeing Crossbones again? He survived and he's all scarred up — does that mean the next the we see him he'll have to be wearing the Crossbones mask?

Anthony Russo: What we'll say... We won't confirm or deny, but this could be perceived as an origin story for Crossbones.